


Shadows of Yesterday

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M, None - Freeform, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 01:22:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every relation requires a foundation on which to build. Jim and Blair, from Simon's POV, have built a fine one, despite the shadows of their pasts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows of Yesterday

## Shadows of Yesterday

by Elizabeth Clarke

Author's webpage: <http://www.geocities.com/meclarke_99.html>

* * *

I've watched them from the beginning, from the first day Jim brought this man-child student into my office and tried to put one over on me. I had to. I felt...compelled. 

Even in the beginning there was a connection; you could _see_ the foundations of their relationship being laid, deeply and solidly. 

Considering everything that has happened since that first day, it would not be outside the bounds of the imagination to believe that the foundation was weak, flimsy. 

Not by several orders of magnitude. 

The _house_ built on that foundation, however... 

...the house had to go through several revisions. Good thing the foundation was a masterwork. 

The first house was the easiest to build, and it was a strange thing to watch. The two of them danced around each other in careful choreography, building a snug relationship for two people badly in need of stability. It grew even stranger when I realized Blair was courting Jim - and didn't even know it. 

He's an anthropologist, one of the most intelligent men I've ever had the privilage to meet, and utterly clueless about some aspects of himself. He can tell you the mating habits of probably 90% of the world's human and animal populations, but cannot recognize the same behavior in himself. Of course, we learn from our parents, and I doubt Naomi ever had to, or bothered, to court anyone in her life... 

In every relationship there is one who tends more toward nurturing, and in this relationship, that's Blair. He has a deeply seated need to be needed. Fortunately, Jim is needy. As much as Blair needs to give affection and care, Jim needs it. For Blair, needing to give slipped easily into love and courtship; so easily, he never knew. I'd stake my reputation as a detective on it. 

I think he began to hero-worship the minute he walked into that hospital exam room and met the embodiment of all his theories. He fell in love when Jim walked into his storage room excuse for an office. The friendship and lust came later, but he did, eventually, "get it", that he was in love. 

So did Jim. 

It just took a long time. 

Blair Sandburg is many things, an official consultant to the PD as a forensic anthropologist one of them, but he is not a fool. Not even to fulfill the dream of a lifetime would Blair allow _anyone_ to insult him, threaten him, and throw him up against a wall with bruising force with any amount of impunity. 

But Jim? Blair let down all of his defenses, opened all the doors and windows, unlocked his soul and gave Jim Ellison the key. 

Jim walked in, looked around, and took possession - without even knowing he'd done it. 

Most people think, that of the two of them, Blair is the more open. Not so. 

With Jim, what you see is what you get. He is a highly intelligent, well educated man who just happens to have been deeply traumatized as both child and man - and that's not counting the damage done to him as his senses emerged. The trauma, however, was straightforward. Jim built one big, thick wall to protect himself, and then built a huge open doorway right in front of his heart. He doesn't slam it shut until he's let you in and it's already too late for him to guard against the hurt. Painful for him, painful to watch, and the pattern never varies, and he never gives up trying. What he gave up, long ago, was hope. He gives and gives until he's bled dry, but he doesn't ever expect to receive. All of which makes it really difficult for those of us who care for him, because I've got to tell you, he has never, to my knowledge, looked or tried in the right place. Good judgement in love, this man _does_ _not_ have; but then, I've already told you, haven't I, that we learn from our parents? 

Blair, on the other hand, is a tightly barricaded fortress surrounded by a convoluted maze; not one of those "keep turning left" mazes, but one with so many twists and turns and dead ends anyone could be excused for thinking it had no center. He'll come out beyond the walls, to visit or to help, but no one until Jim got inside the final walls, not even Naomi, his mother. 

Blair loves her - adores her really, but it's my belief she's the reason he has that final barrier. 

I've always thought they must have moved around a lot when he was a child. Can I prove it? No, and Blair isn't saying. 

He tells a lot of stories, but with very few exceptions, those stories take place _after_ he started college. 

When Blair says Naomi never stayed with any of her men, never stayed in one place all that long, that she never told him who his father was, he always makes it sound like something wonderful, an advantage over all the rest of the stay-at-home world. 

I look at Daryl and shake my head. Would he find it more of an advantage to go to four different World Series Games than to know me? I look at my home, and Joan's, and ask myself if he would rather live out of a car and backpack? Would he have gotten a scholarship offer from Oxford instead of Duke? Would he be a better person? 

I don't think so. 

I think Blair was forged in a furnace; he is who he is in spite of everything. Just like Jim. 

Jim's scars have the names MOTHER, FATHER, US GOV'T, and CAROLYN written on them. Blair's are numerous, nameless and just as deep. 

Are they all emotional? I think Jim's are. Blair's? I don't know. I know what my cop instinct says, and I don't like what it says one little bit. 

I don't like the big silence about his early life. I've met too many people like that, and almost invariably they are hiding something intolerable. Do you need an example? Look at Jim, the master of repression. For most people, holidays will bring up some kind of happy memory or story to share. Neither one of them have any. 

And pictures. I find it odd that both of them have parents with full photo albums, but neither one of them have albums or framed photo's of their childhood or of family members in their wallets or on their walls. The photo's are there. They can be duplicated for the asking. 

Do they simply not want to remember? 

Jim will tell you straight out he doesn't, and doesn't want to. Blair? He obfuscates. I wonder sometimes, if he isn't protecting his mother with his lack of memories, or perhaps it's his relationship with his mother he is protecting by not remembering, by telling the stories of wonderful times and places and experiences. Maybe it's both, because she doesn't seem to have a clue. 

Do I think he was physically abused? Sexually abused? Obviously, I don't _know_. I _do_ think the opportunity was there for it, as well as for verbal and emotional abuse, to occur. It only makes sense; the more variables you introduce into an equation, the more opportunities for undesirable outcomes exist. Look at what happens to children in so-called two-parent, stable families. Children have very little control over their lives, and don't forget, he was still a child, at least legally, for the better part of his undergraduate carreer. 

Did he have a home? I think he early learned to make his home inside himself. Wherever he was, he was home. I don't think he ever had a physical home with his mother. I know what his birth certificate says, I know he was born right here in Cascade - but there's never been a tax bill, utility bill, or phone number issued in Naomi Sandburg's name. 

You now how University, credit and employment records ask for emergency contacts? Lots of them also ask for the nearest living relative other than a spouse, mother or father, not living with you. Jim's have always listed his father and brother. The names were there and acknowledged, even if the relationship was empty. Blair? Up until Blair met Jim, Blair's emergency contact was his department head. His mother was listed as "address unknown". Under nearest living relatives? He always wrote N/A. Not applicable. 

It leads me to believe that the aunts, uncles, and cousins he talks about from time to time _aren't_.In the blood sense, I mean. I figure they're just courtesy titles. 

If they were more than that, why didn't he go to them on holidays? When he was in trouble? When the warehouse blew up? 

Where were they when he was shot? 

When he got kicked out of the loft? 

When he died? 

Speculation, though, is useless with Blair Sandburg. He, more than anyone else I've ever known, is a mystery. We will only ever know what he chooses to tell us. Except for one thing. 

Blair Sandburg loves James Ellison with his heart, his soul, his mind, with every fiber of his being. 

And James Ellison? James Ellison loves him back. 

Definitely a foundation on which to build. 

~~~~~to be continued in "I See Tomorrow". 


End file.
